Food Waste Calculator
Weigh or honestly estimate the food your household bins in a week - leftovers, wilted produce, forgotten containers. The calculator scales it to a year of kilos and money, per household and per person.
Campaigns recite national averages nobody believes apply to them. This calculator makes your own bin the witness, then prices the three free habits - list, fridge map, cook-the-tired-things-first - that typically remove nearly half of it.
How to use
- Collect one honest week of food waste in a bag and weigh it - include plate scrapings and drinks poured away.
- Enter your average price per kilo from a real shopping receipt.
- Read the yearly figure, then run the three-fixes month and weigh again - the drop is the savings column.
Frequently asked questions
How much food does the average household waste?
Roughly a fifth to a third of purchased food - several hundred euros a year for a family, mostly fresh produce, bread and leftovers. Almost everyone estimates themselves below average, which is why the week-long weighing exercise lands so hard.
What foods get wasted the most?
Salad and leafy vegetables lead, then bread, fruit, milk and cooked leftovers - the fresh-perishable half of the trolley. The freezer is the reset button for everything except lettuce; the salad drawer is a queue, not a museum.
Does meal planning really reduce food waste?
Yes - a written list against a planned week typically removes around 40% of waste, because it kills the impulse produce and the duplicate jars. Planning is the cheapest grocery saving available and it compounds weekly.
Are best-before dates the same as expiry dates?
No - best-before is about quality and most foods are fine well past it; use-by is about safety and applies to perishables only. The sniff-and-look test governs best-before; use-by on meat and fish is the one date worth treating as law.